If no one paid for these exclusive deals, the dev's would release the demos to everyone and pay the associated costs themselves.

This is a good point that I've found myself pressed to argue against. It's not that the practice is inherently evil or underhanded, but is it even necessary?

For betas it makes sense, because it allows them to perform a controlled release with registered users who they can get information from.

For demos (which are supposed to be higher than beta-stage quality, ha ha ha, I kill myself) however, the only incentives I can see for the developer is the lure of cold hard cash for extended development (or profit lining for you pessimists).

I doubt that companies like fileplanet charge developers to host their demos, since they make ad revenue off every hit, they want as many demos as they can, which is where the exclusivity comes into place, but on the flipside one of the nice things about being a fileplanet subscriber is having the ads turned OFF, which brings me back around to the point that I feel fileplanet is just providing a little extra "thanks" to its subscribers.

I don't necessarily feel the practice of exclusivity is bad, as an earlier poster pointed out, it's been common among magazine distributions (especially before the Internet proliferation) to have exclusive demos on the media CDs. It's a selling point of the service.

I tend to be less on the consumer-rights side and more on the business logic side of arguments, as long as there is a civil reason for the logic. Unfortunately since we don't know the inner workings of these deals, I can't really make an argument on this point. If the developers are on the receiving end of providing an exclusive demo, then I believe in them. However, if it turns out to be a Fileplanet/etc. and PUBLISHER deal, where the developer gets finger-pointed by the higher ups, then my stance changes and it's not a good thing.

Da Stylin' Rasta: Thanks for the civil discussion. I know I'm often tilting at windmills and hoping consumers will be more discriminating, but I can't help myself. I don't find it outrageous that dev's sign these exclusive demo release deals, just annoying. And if they annoy me, there's a strong likliehood that I won't buy their products. It's a fair point that the demo may be released some time later and, certainly, that does mitigate my annoyance. Ultimately, though, I suppose my gripe is with people who are willing to pay for the service of playing the demo a week or two sooner than everyone else. Indeed, you're not really paying to play early but rather for the demo to be withheld from everyone else (leaving aside other services provided by Fileplanet et al). If no one paid for these exclusive deals, the dev's would release the demos to everyone and pay the associated costs themselves.

Fang: As far as membership stores like Costco go, people don't pay to browse. They pay because they know that the fee will be more than made up by the lower prices and quite easily. The whole format is a gimmick for wholesalers to pacify angry retailers. And no one owes me anything. People can do what they want. And other people can do what THEY want in response.

BTW, does anyone have any idea how much Fileplanet might pay for an exclusive demo deal? I can't imagine it being very much but am very curious to know.

I used to say pay sites were bullshit, but they've got a good point, bandwidth is expensive. And it's expensive because so many people are getting online everyday. If there weren't so many people using the internet, all downloading the same file, then no one would have to pay for internet and fileplanet could go back to being ftp.cdrom.comI do say that exclusive demos are bullshit, but I can understand why they exist, and I feel that is the key word there: Understanding.

That said, I feel the petition is a waste of time. Just do what I did when Freelancer tried this: Pir8!I'm glad I did too, I finished the game before the demo was public and realized that the game sucked.(As a side note, I borrowed a pir8 copy of SimCity 4, and bought it four days later, so please don't mark me unscrupulous. Just internet savvy.)

Blue's News is definitely #1, not just in the excellent editing and formatting, but the fast delivery and no-nonsense site formatting. I like to think of Blue's News to gaming as Google is to search engines: Blue really understands what it's about, and his content delivery system is no fuss, no muss, just good solid information without any flashy images or daring site design.

However I don't damn Fileplanet, because for gaming files (once you disable the ads) it functions in the same vein, lots of text, easy on the graphics.

Blue's News is #1, and I'm not just brown-nosing. This is the only game site I visit any more, FilePlanet be damned. About the only other time I'd visit other sites for news is when I do want to try a demo or something, and even then there are always plenty of free sites.

I like your answer better than mine. I'm hardly a poet, I just use a deluge of big words to barrage my opponent into submission, you however have a much more clever sarcasm approach that I enjoyed more, kudos

Maybe department stores should charge an admission fee. How much would you be willing to pay for that?

About $45 a year, and lots of other people pay, too. Oh wait, what was Costco, BJ's, and Sam's thinking? It's completely unfair that they charge people to shop in their stores. You should sue. Or refuse to go into their stores, since that's a favor to them.

So you want your game demo now, and demand not to have to wait for it. These corporations owe you, dang it!

EDIT: Since i'm in this and am bored on a Wednesday afternoon, glambaz, I'm still missing the argument. They release them to the public anyways, these demos never remain EXCLUSIVELY on fileplanet/gamespot/etc. for long, after about a week they're released to the public, you're paying for the sneak preview. To use your department store analogy, it's more like having a velvet curtained place in the backroom where they show off their new products before they go live on the department store floor. And on the side, for the vast majority of these services (Fileplanet, etc.) you're paying for another service (Fileplanet namely the excellent access to bandwidth and support) and the demos come as a perk and a thanks. But I've yet to see a demo on fileplanet (betas don't count) that wasn't released to the general public within a matter of days and at most a week. Show me an example to prove me wrong, but until then, I don't see the argument.

Hmmmm. Maybe department stores should charge an admission fee. How much would you be willing to pay for that? Let's get this straight. The developers/publishers are not doing me a favor by issuing demos. I'm doing them a favor by sampling their product. Corporations pay billions of dollars a year just trying to get people into their stores or to listen to a sales pitch. It's marketing overhead which is recouped in the purchase price of the product. Petitions are a bit silly either way but let it just be known that many, if not most, gamers are just going to ignore companies that don't issue demos and they are going to categorically reject companies who want potential customers to cover their marketing costs (directly or indirectly).